Records show tough questions to Cuomo

ALBANY — Records of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s first online chat with New Yorkers show the Democrat’s hand-picked questions didn’t include an onslaught of queries on thorny issues including hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

Several New Yorkers on the chat asked to see all the questions or a way to obtain them. Cuomo didn’t answer.

Five months after the chat, billed as part of Cuomo’s effort to make government more transparent, all the questions were released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Law request submitted in September.

Cuomo deferred most questions about whether to allow companies to extract natural gas deep in upstate shale to his environmental conservation chief even as New Yorkers grew angry online.

The questions are being posted Thursday on Cuomo’s Citizens Connects website.